How Do You Learn in Grad School?

I'm almost done with week three of my first graduate school class and I'm starting to realize that learning is different. It is no longer about the memorization or how well you know the material, but it's about how well you understand it and how you can apply it. It is no longer just learning about what has been done and what has been learned, but it's about learning how to take what we know and apply it to something new. It's about trying to learn more. Science is never complete, and science isn't always right. A paper we were supposed to read for class today was retracted because of an abnormal change in the cell line (a change in the proteins it was expressing) that caused the whole paper to come into question. Science that looks to be possible, and was replicated, isn't always accurate. It is important to follow all experiments through, and if you're using cell lines then it's important to characterize it periodically. After talking to my mother today she compared it to doing the IB program. What's important about science is that you always want to be moving forward, and you always want to be teaching; teaching your classmates, teaching the science world, teaching the community.